Method For Generating Simple Object Access Protocol Messages and Process Engine

Abstract

A method for generating a Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) message in XML during execution of a process in a SOA-based process engine apparatus and a corresponding process engine apparatus. The method includes: generating and storing an XML character string containing a fixed SOAP message skeleton; generating and storing an XML character string containing an instance-constant variable; generating an XML character string containing a dynamic variable; and concatenating the XML character string containing the fixed SOAP message skeleton and the XML character string containing the instance-constant variable as previously stored and the XML character string containing the dynamic variable by a character string concatenating operation to generate a SOAP message. A process engine apparatus including a message analyzer unit, a message pre-composer unit, a character string depository, and a message composer unit is also provided.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This application claims priority under 35 U.S.C. §119 from Chinese Patent Application No. 200810129997.5, filed Jul. 30, 2008, the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0002]The present invention generally relates to the field of Web services and, in particular, to process engine technologies based upon the Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA).BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0003]In recent years, Web service technologies have advanced rapidly along with speedy development of computer and network technologies. Web service technologies have become a predominant technology foundation and platform for development of applications. Web services have been supported by major corporations in the industry, e.g., IBM, Microsoft, BEA, etc., due to their advantages of easy encapsulation, loose coupling, utilization of standard protocol specifications and the ability of being highly integrated. International st...

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Benefits of technology

[0006]In order to address the above problem in the prior art, an object of the invention is to provide a method for generating a SOAP message during execution of a business process that can reduce the time required for generating the SOAP message by simple concatenation of character strings in place of conventional composition of the SOAP message and thereby optimize performance of a process engine. Another object of the invention is to provide a process engine improved in performance, which replaces conventional composition of a SOAP message with simple concatenation of character strings so that the time required for generating the SOAP message can be reduced significantly and hence performance of the process engine can be optimized.

[0009]The present invention improves upon the conventional method of composing a SOAP message by using a light-weight XML character string concatenating operation and thereby optimizing the performance of the process engine.

Problems solved by technology

A Web service which is a stand-alone modular application describes operations to be executed or data to be exchanged with another Web service using protocols based on the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) and typically fails to satisfy operation requirements of a business process by itself.

However, composition of SOAP messages in the XML is a very frequently occurring and time-consuming character string processing task.

That is, composition of SOAP messages is one of major causes resulting in delay in invoking a business process.

Moreover, at the service level, a long response time to a Web service may degrade satisfaction of customers, and the Web service often cannot be offered to a sufficient number of concurrent users due to limited resources.

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